Monthly Archives: May 2012

So, in the aftermath of a malware attack and some subsequent (and long-overdue) software upgrades, it would appear that theme of this site (the code that creates the overall look for the webpages) has undergone some changes!

I’m not that happy with the current options, so I’m on the lookout for another theme — don’t be surprised if, over the next short while, the site is rather like Daffy Duck in “Duck Amuck,” trying on different costumes and overlays to see what fits best!

(and come see me over on the coming home blog — just a few more days in May; we’re in the home stretch!)

Good (late) morning to you, my friends and compatriots! Are you striking today – and if so, how? What work that’s not for your own betterment will you relinquish today? How and with whom do you stand in solidarity?

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I’ve just shard the first official post for my May blogging project, Coming Home, which (in honor of National Masturbation Month) will center around self love, radical self care, orgasms, embodiment, skill sharing (!) and trauma recovery. Please join me over on at wecancomehome.blogspot.com and share your stories — let me know, too, if you enter into your own daily or more regular orgasm practice for this May! We need to hear from one another — the more we learn about the complex, joyous, difficult, stunning realities of one another’s bodies and orgasms, the more, I think, we can accept our own.

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What do I want to say about this this morning? Here’s what was hard about coming this morning — I kept thinking about you. Well, you, and also you all out there, about this masturbate-a-blog, about what I was going to post, about how important it was for me to describe clearly and articulately why I’m passionate about this project, why I think masturbation is important, why I want you to take on a daily orgasm practice this month, too.

I didn’t get started writing today until about 7:30,well after when I had planned, three and a half hours after I wanted to get my day going. I fell asleep around 11, and had the alarm set for 4. I remember it going off, I remember rolling over to turn it off; I remember thinking, Ok, self, here we go. And then my body took me right back to sleep. Same thing at five, though no alarm. Here’s me waking up, ok, now I’m late, gotta get going, get coming, get writing. Funny how my body didn’t listen, hmm?

This was my plan: get up at 4, get off, write in my notebook for the orgasm blog and for this blog, too — then type up both blogs, post both blogs,then take Sophie out — all by 6:30 or 7. After a workshop that requires the full body of my attention on Monday night, and let’s not even talk about what it means that I’m taking on the emotional engagement of a month writing about my orgasms for the whole world to read.

I bet you can see the madness in this plan, but I didn’t. Still, this morning, t wasn’t ready. My body decided to sleep.

And here’s what’s true — this month is supposed to be all about radical self-care, about self-love, about getting yourself off as the kindest thing you could do for your body — and I’m trying to force it into a schedule? I’m getting stressed at myself for not coming fast enough? At five I fell back to sleep, too. Then I woke up at 6, sleepy, laughing at my own madness, and moved into my morning.

Yesterday, at the Write Whole workshop, one of our prompts was this: take a couple minutes to create a list of ways you haven’t loved your body, then a couple minutes to generate a list of ways you have loved your body. Let one item from each list choose you (or just one from one of the lists) and start your writing there — what does it mean to love your body? How has it changed over time? Follow your writing wherever it seems to want to go.

I wrote about how I dissociate, and dis-embody, through constant busy-ness: when every second is scheduled, there’s definitely no time to be in my body, to drift into imagination, to relax, to play, to feel. What would it look like to love my body by saying no more often? This is another part of my practice this month.

~~ ~~ ~~I am grateful for you today, for all I learn about myself and my own possibility (meaning, all of our possibilities) when I get to be with your words. Thank you for all that you offer of your experiences, in their complexity and gorgeousness. Thank you for the ways you are gentle even with the parts of your body that you find the most difficult to acknowledge and feel. Thank you for your majesty (yes!) and thank you for your words.

“Activist erotica for everyone!”

Co-edited by Jen Cross, Amy Butcher, and Dr. Carol Queen, Sex Still Spoken Here: The Erotic Reading Circle Anthology is a collection of erotica from the Center for Sex and Culture's Erotic Reading Circle, and contains 27 hot stories, a how-to guide to help start your own erotic reading circle, and essays on why it matters to read aloud in community.

Susie Bright says about Sex Still Spoken Here: "Still sex-positive, still sex-radical, and still producing the most affecting writing in any genre — not just the one-handed reading variety, The Erotic Reading Circle shares its best with the rest of the world."

writing ourselves whole

What They’re Saying

Dive Deep transformed and continues to impact the landscape of my life. My manuscript broke through boundaries, and I learned pride and confidence with regard to my craft. Now, as I travel along, I am supported by the momentum of the Divers Deep. My faith is in my fellow writers — Across genres, the pages I read in Dive Deep are food. Jen, anyway, is magic. So is the rhythm of meeting every ten days — it keeps one immersed, and the google group is breath under water. I challenge you to drop into your writer’s self. Your will be held. You and your words will grow. ~ Yisraela Tzviah Emily “Emma” Cohen http://www.yisraelatzviah.com/

Memberships

Our mission and vision

The mission: We offer safe, confidential writing groups to a broad cross-section of the community, and in particular to those who are living in the aftermath of intimate violences. We engage a non-clinical, transformative and communal approach for those living with and in the aftermath of trauma, and recognize that resurrecting our own language and stories is a necessary part of re-ordering ourselves after trauma.

The vision: Writing Ourselves Whole seeks to change the world through writing. We exist in the service of transforming struggle into art, turning isolation toward community, and creating spaces in which individuals may come to recognize the artist/writer within.